Key Insights From The Enterprising Artist Survey

A couple of months ago we hosted The Enterprising Artist Survey here on Right Brain Rockstar, and now I’d like to share some of the findings with you.

I must apologise for keeping you waiting on this. I had intended to share these findings soon after the survey was completed. The reason it has taken longer than anticipated is because an unprecedented 954 people completed the survey!

That’s about 10 times what we were expecting, so obviously it was quite a bit of work to analyse all that data and compile it into a useful report. Thanks for your patience!

Thank you for participating!

I’d like to thank everyone who took the time to complete the survey. If you provided your details and asked to be mentioned, then you can find your name in the (extremely long) list below. (Compiling that list was a fun Excel learning experience!)

Survey Analysis

Since the results came in, a few of the 20 bloggers who helped to promote the survey have written their own interpretations of the findings:

The Abundant Artist

The Thriving Artist Survey Results - Cory Huff noticed that artists tend to get distracted by social media and suggested some alternative strategies that may be more effective.

Cory also noted that 32% of artists made less than 10% of their income from their art in 2011, yet more than 27% of artists expect that art will account for more than 90% of their income in 2012.

This is despite the fact that 40% of artist websites are irrelevant or out of date, and that 55% of artists say that understanding and choosing the best forms of marketing for themselves is their top challenge as an artist.

Not to mention the fact that many artists cited financial problems as one of their primary fears about being an artist.

Is this self-delusion, as Cory believes, or just good old-fashioned optimism? What do you think?

(Cory has more posts planned based on the survey, so keep an eye on his blog).

Roaerie Studio

Calling All Female Artists – Carla Stein was gratified to find that the survey results dispelled some of the stereotypes she used to hear about female artists from her art school instructors. 83% of respondents were female.

(Whether this is indicative of the art community as a whole or just that women are more inclined to complete surveys remains unclear!)

Artonomy

The Results – The Enterprising Artist Survey – Helen Aldous focuses on the positive insights, noting that the results seem to show that overall we know what we are doing artistically but need a little help and confidence to market our work to the world.

Note: I know some of the other bloggers have planned posts about the survey, so you might want to bookmark this post as I’ll update it with any new articles as I hear about them.

Other Key Findings

The Internet plays a huge role in the vast majority of artists’ work. 82% of artists use the Internet up to 20 hours per week for various art-related tasks including promotion/marketing, learning/research and networking.

Over 35% of artists either don’t have a website, or theirs is not relevant and up-to-date. Difficulty understanding and choosing the right Internet marketing options is the main challenge cited in selling and promoting online.

Artists on the whole struggle with promotion and marketing more than anything else. Social media and artists websites are by far the most commonly used online promotion methods (over 75%), whereas blogging and email/newsletters are only used by around half of respondents.

You can download the full report below, to see what other interesting stats came out of the survey.

It’s worth pointing out (as others already have), that this survey was not a scientific study and should not be interpreted as such. The survey was open to anyone, and so the results may not be 100% reliable. They do however give us some interesting insights into the overall state of the artistic community.

Download the Report

If you want to look at the findings in more detail, you can download a PDF report of the most significant results. I was going to have this as a ‘pay with a tweet’ download, but I don’t want to discriminate against non-tweeters. So I’m making it available to everyone. Click the following link to download the report:

Have Your Say

What do you find most interesting about the findings of The Enterprising Artist Survey? Join the discussion in the comments below (scroll past the long list of names!)

There’s plenty more to write about these findings, so subscribe to free updates to make sure you don’t miss any future posts. Also, feel free to write your own blog post about the results, and if you have some interesting insights, I’ll add your link to this post.

9 Comments on Key Insights From The Enterprising Artist Survey

I’m shocked! Can’t believe so many people who really, really want to sell their art don’t even keep their website up to date! Granted, it all takes time; not all of us has the luxury of spending eight hours a day on our art and marketing. However–MAKE A PRIORITY LIST! And website should be way up there, in my opinion.

i didn’t find the fact that most people responding were women. i think there are more women artists then ever…just go to the outdoor art fairs in southern california, the percentage of women vendors is a lot higher. it was interesting to see the level of education…but i wonder if their degree was in art or they came upon art later in life after achieving a career in another field.

i guess what surprised me is the income received for their art…would have thought it to be a lot higher. it would be interesting to find out what’s going on with that aspect of their business…is it a hobby for some, relying on a 9-5 job for income or married and therefore not needing to make much money. or from the age of the participants responding maybe they are retired and really don’t need to make a lot of money from their art, it’s more of a love of creating than selling?